I was driving my dad's 07 Camry Hybrid yesterday on a road trip and experienced something weird. At between 60 and 80 on the highway the car seemed to be shifting a lot between the gas and electric , causing a surging sensation. I was wondering is this normal for toyota hybrids or camry hybrid systems in general? I drive a 2006 civic hybrid and never experience this type of surging. Is it just the difference between the honda and toyota hybrid systems?

Is this normal? Should he take it in for a fix?

 

ricky,

How many miles are on the Camry? There are several things that can be happening here. If the car has over 30,000 miles on the odometer and is running a lower tier gas, items 1 and 2 could be the problem.

1) Throttle body needs cleaning.
2) Bad tank of gas (happens to the best with water attracted to the ethanol in underground tanks).

Other things to look at would include the following.

3) Vacuum leak (doubtful here. this would set the MIL).
4) Driver not used to the VERY sensitive throttle.

I suspect the latter having driven the Civic and Camry in our family. The Camry requires a very sensitive touch and what would be a very small throttle manipulation on the Civic is quite a bit more on the Camry. Also at the speeds you are running (60 to 80) the car might use the electric system to "help" under certain load conditions but the ICE will always be running and provide the primary motive power.

If your dad drives the car, does it surge with him? If the answer is yes, and he has had the car for a while, I would suspect a mechanical problem and have the dealer take a look at it.

 

I noticed my '07 TCH having some surge when the engine kicks in from the EV Mode. Over time I got used to it and seldom notice it anymore. I wouldn't know about the nudge above 60 mph.

 

In my experience, I think you may have a problem. My wife's 07 TCH is so smooth that I have to look at the display to tell which is powering the car.

 

"...my dad's..."

Indicates inexperience.......

On the highway travel at highway speeds, especially if the SOC is above 2.3's, any level of acceleration, however small, will result in the use of the electric rather than a rise in engine RPM. Sort of like in a standard car having the automatic transmssion unlock the torque converter due to the need for just a small level of additional engine torque.

As hard as the design engineers might work to make this "transition" fully transparent there is almost always a slight "seat of the pants" feeling that results. These "transitions" become especially noticeable using cruise control.

 

Bubbling this one up because....

Last Friday on my way home from work (job-1);
Temp was 80f / Car warmed up ~190f Water Temp
30 mph steady state on level road - ICE was running and I noticed the car surging lightly, then a little more - but not to the point where it was not driveable.
I looked on the Energy display and saw that it was the Electric motor kicking in and out in perfect time to the surging. All the while the ICE was running.
Normally if the Motor-generator drops out of drive mode, it displays regen. It did not this time.
I was only a couple of miles from home - no other indications that anything was wrong.
No SES light or CE light.

Saturday morning, I leave to go to my other job and I am about 20 minutes from home on the highway at about 55 MPH and the CE light comes on..

I have a ScanGauge-II so I pulled over and off the highway and scanned the system. All it showed was code P0000 - which tells me nothing - and so far it appears that from what I've read on the www, ScanGauge does not know how to interpret some codes so it just displays P0000.

The car seemed to run fine - I continued on to my job and home (about 100 miles total) and the fuel mileage was fine.

Mileage on the car is 20k. It's a 2007 TCH. Oil is fine (0w20 Mobil-1)..

Thought I would share this with you good folks before I take it back to the dealer..

I'll let you know what they say.

 

Update -

It was faulty Air Fuel Sensor PN 89467-06060 .. The code they found that ID'd the problem was P2195 .. I thought that since many of the codes for the HSD cars were undocumented that I would post it here in the hope that it might save someone some trouble someday..

While it was in the shop, they fixed the squeaky console that I've put up with since it was new, also replaced the rear brake pads that squealed when reversing the car.

Also replaced was the electric power steering - under a recall campaign that I had forgotten about.